Sooo much for this..

Lol, I NEVER got past Post number 3. !
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Pain in my eyes… The sight of disaster..

Katrina
Katrina
What a beautiful name.

.                           

She ripped through our city
left nothing the same.

                

She tore through the walls
knocked down every door.

                

More and more houses
more things to explore.

        

She took what she wanted
tossed the rest where she pleased

                

Even after the warnings
it was still hard to believe

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

All the things we loved and knew
were lost and destroyed
the night Katrina came through

                                                                            

We finally thought our prayers had beat her
but only until we heard about Rita

                                                                       

 

 

 

        

Boss City Bound

     When my family evacuated, we went to Shreveport-Bossier, Louisiana. About 7 hours North of New Orleans. I really didn’t mind being there, in fact i actually liked it. No, it wasn’t home, but at that time it hadn’t really clicked that i was never going back home anyway.. The first night there was pretty antsy. I didn’t really know what was going on. I just tried to stay out of everyone’s way. We checked into a Holiday Inn. It was under renovations, so the pool was closed.. On “Vacation” and we were already confined to a hotel room. My dad was watching the news, staying updated on the course of the Hurricane. He did that all night. Even though it was a big deal i still didn’t fully understand the severity of the situation, not yet. Day by day i slowly became quite clear on the issue.

     The next day, my mom’s job changed our hotel. So we moved into a casino called, “The Hollywood.” Which is now, “The El Dorado.” This is where i got the first kick of reality.. It was a nice elaborate casino, decorated with characters and props from older movies. There was an old school type diner inside fully equipped with a jukebox. Early that morning we were in the hotel, along with several other people, checking in. Everyone was kind of rushing around, trying to get things done.  I remember a lot of small details about this day, like wanting to go all the way to the top floor while we waited, but the doorman wouldn’t let me because we weren’t residents of the hotel just yet.  I remember the hotel being right across the street from a Hooters, too. In the midst of waiting My sister, Brandy, got a phone call from her mother, Peggy, who lived in Poplarville, Mississippi, with her husband, and my brother, Jerel. Her Mom told her that Jerel was insisting on going down the the coast for some unknown reason. That was the first time it set in how bad things were about to get. I remember how hard my stomach dropped when she told my dad what was going on. I was shaking, so terrified. I know how stubborn and closed minded my brother is.. Can’t tell him nothing. He had his mind set and that was pretty much a done deal. I was on the verge of tears, I didn’t want anything to happen to him. And i don’t know what i would have done if it had. I hated that feeling, that not knowing how things were going to turn out. It was stressful and heart breaking. I watched my dad go outside the glass Casino doors. I watched his body language. I watched how tense he was. I watched as he rubbed his head, the way he always did when he was stressed or nervous. I heard the muffled sounds of his voice coming through the doors. The call between them ended and he stood outside for a while before he came back inside. I didn’t know what to think.. No one did. He came in and told us everything would be fine. See, My was a cop back in the day so he knew all the cops in the area. He ended up telling my brother that he would personally have him arrested if he tried to go to the coast. Jerel isn’t too fond of cops, my dad knew this, so he never went.. Thank God. The area he was trying to go to was hit severely. That Close call of a situation rippled the water under the boat my family was in, but even still this wasn’t the worst part..

My head below Katrina

I am a victim.

I am a victim of Hurricane Katrina.

     On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina tore through the city of New Orleans, My city. I’m sure you already know that. But, its what you don’t know about what happened that is the real disaster. Nobody knows the true horror of what happened in, and to, that city. Not unless you lived it.. I’m lucky enough to say I did. This is my story, and what i made of it.

     It wasn’t really unusual to hear about hurricane watches at that time of year, it was hurricane season. I don’t even really remember when i first heard about “Tropical Depression- Katrina.” I don’t know how i felt at that moment, because as far as i know i felt nothing, that moment doesn’t exist to me anymore. The first memory i have of the situation is being at home on the phone, like always, talking to a friend from school about Volleyball try-outs being on Saturday. We were both intending to try-out. Saturday’s try-outs were “Postponed until farther notice.”  I’m not sure we ever got a notice any farther than that.. My mom was working for Hibernia Bank, which is now Capitol One, During that time. She was on the Disaster Recovery team. From what i can remember this was a team put together by the bank, of the most skilled workers, to open the bank in a different location if a disaster were to occur. People would still need access to their money, that’s what this team of people did for them. The recovery team had nice benefits; Them and their family, of any amount, were evacuated and put into a hotel, free of cost. The company paid for everything. We were reimbursed for everything from gas, to food, to clothes, to snacks for the road trip. Everything. We were a lot luckier than most people in the city. This played a quite large role in the way i reacted to the situation as a whole, and i would even go as far as to say it changed my life too. Looking back on the self taught lesson i learned, i know this has ample contribution to who i am today. Nobody really thought the hurricane was actually going to hit, especially not as hard as it did. That’s one of those things “Everybody” knows, but unless you were there to live it you wouldn’t really know why nobody expected to hit. In the year 2004, Ivan, A category 5 hurricane hit New Orleans… Well.. It was supposed to, at least. This was one year previous to Katrina. Ivan was the biggest and scariest storm the city and heard about in a while. In fact i can’t remember evacuating for any other hurricanes since 1998, for Hurricane Georges. My family and i went to Mississippi to stay with family for that one. I can remember sitting outside on the porch with my dad and my uncles watching the hurricane as it hit. For hurricane Ivan the whole city went into a frenzy, everyone evacuated. I remember going to Baton Rouge and it taking HOURSS!! It took us 22.5 hours to get from New Orleans to Baton Rouge that day. It was slow and painful torture. At one point we were pretty much parked in front of a gas station, and we saw people getting out of their cars running to get drinks and coming back before the car had even moved. It was just so funny to me that people were doing it. The simple fact that everyone in the city packed everything and evacuated, and for what, a thunder storm? That’s why nobody left for Katrina. Then there were the people who didn’t have the means to evacuate. That was one of the main reasons it always made me so mad when people would say that the people who didn’t evacuate were stupid, or it was their own fault and they got what they deserved. If you weren’t there and don’t know what happened, and don’t know their situation, then you do not have the right to comment on their decision. Point Blank..

     That’s all for entry one. Check back in a few days for entry number two. Entry by entry i am going to re-live this experience in vivid detail. Something i have never done before. I have never told any one person my entire story. It’s going to be rough, I’m sure, but it’s something i think i am ready to do. I’m a good sport. Comment and let me know what you think. Or you can contact me on Facebook- Toni Lynell Silas. Follow me on Twitter @tonikynz5044